


Silence

by I_Have_No_Idea



Category: The OA (TV)
Genre: Episode 2: New Colossus, F/M, First Meeting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-02
Updated: 2017-01-02
Packaged: 2018-09-14 05:00:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,114
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9163147
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/I_Have_No_Idea/pseuds/I_Have_No_Idea
Summary: Homer's reactions to Prairie's arrival





	

**Author's Note:**

> I'm really not much of a writer so I apologize, but I just love this show so much and I'm so emo that I've finished it already so here this is.

Before HAP happened Homer couldn't stand the creeping implications of silence. Growing up in a home full of four other boisterous high school football players, noise was a comfort to him, full of loud laughter, play-fighting and booming voices. Back then silence was the precursor to bad news. Like when his mother called them all in to inform them of their grandmother's passing, or when his father told them he had been laid off. Quietness was likely to be deadly. Noise meant hope. He was told when he flatlined at that football game the entire stadium was silenced, and juxtaposed to the noisy welcoming he had upon his recovery, he believed that the absence of noise was the universe's own foreshadowing of a shitstorm. He had thought that nothing good could possibly come from silence.

But after months down in that cage he grew to appreciate those moments of silence, when the only thing heard was the steady rhythm of the rushing stream and his own breath. He cherished the times he'd wake up before the others and lay there with his eyes closed, able to will his mind to believe that he wasn't locked in a cage, that he was a free man. But those times always ended too soon, halted by the lab's noise pollution as the feeder whirred, sending down their breakfast, or by the sound of workbooks on metal as HAP walked down the winding staircase. There was never enough silence in this hellhole.

Relief came one day as HAP warned of an upcoming business meeting he was supposed to attend. Something about a convention all about the science behind death.

"I'm hoping to discover a breakthrough for us there." He gave a small smile as the tension grew. There was an unspoken chorus of biting words, wanting to lash out at the man for ever implying that they were all somehow equal partners in these experiments. Instead of voicing this, however, their silence spoke louder, glaring and defiant at this man. Homer chuckled to himself.

"Expect some changes when I come back." He finished, glaring back at the three of them before striding back up the steps.

"Oh fuck off" Scott mumbled, crouching back down to his plants.

Homer smiled, knowing what HAP's absence would mean; a few days of pure silence. For three days the only noises bothering Homer would be those he deemed necessary, the water, the food, and the voices of the others, and even then, those noises would be rare. He could relax for a few days at least, something they all needed ever since the day he took August and never brought her back.

Homer bore with HAP's odd mix of music, mainly classical, some folky stuff, all allegro and soft but still noise nonetheless. And then finally, there was silence. The monitors showing them the outside were shut off.

He let out a long breath before climbing into bed. The lights weren't even shut off and he knew this time would be better spent reading because he knew that during the night he would not be able to with the lights turned off but still, he laid there, content with the quietness.

The only sounds he could make out even while focusing were the routine crisp sounds of paper scratching against paper as Scott flipped through a book he had already read five times, and Rachel's sniffles.

It was the ultimate relief.

The silence was broken 32 hours and 12 minutes in when HAP's bullshit hipster music came on the loudspeakers.

Homer sat up in bed, looking at the other's confused faces for answers. They all knew they were supposed to have roughly 40 more hours of bliss before he returned.

The monitors remained off, and for a good hour the three of them sat in noisy confusion as they tried to understand why his trip would possibly have ended so abruptly.

"Maybe he has a lady friend over." Scott bitterly joked, as they exchanged theories.

Despite the sarcastic tone Homer mulled over the thought, trying to rationalize why this was happening.

HAP did play music whenever anyone visited his house for fear that somehow visitors could hear the captives below. But it was always more extreme death metal to completely drown out their helpless screams.

This music was more like his generic studying folk mix.

This was a different situation altogether.

Then there was the scraping of the door sliding out of its frame, opening to the upstairs, and the three watched in a stunned silence as he led down a lanky blonde girl down the steps. Homer opened his mouth to yell to her, willing her to get help or fight him or just do anything.

But then he saw her eyes glaze over in the direction of the cages. Her gaze knocked the wind out of him. Such beautiful yet unexpressive eyes, they seemed to just glide over the captives in such aching indifference. He wondered if this was the lab partner HAP had talked of.

"It smells like rock." The girl said with a smile. She was so frail and pale and angelic looking and HAP had his arms around her and-

Homer didn't understand- couldn't understand what was going on. How could anyone look on to this basic invasion of human rights with such brazen indifference and utter lack of sympathy? And how could anyone with such absence of empathetic emotion be so beautiful?

Homer looked on in a horrified awe as HAP easily directed her into the spare cell. The one August had inhabited just a week ago.

And just as he began to understand the situation, HAP shut the door and latched it shut, closing the new girl in. She was one of them.

His heart broke for the poor girl as she began to realize what had just happened. She stood up shakily, body like a flamingo, tall and fighting to stay balanced and Homer watched her walk straight into the wall in front of her.

As the girl seemed to realize her boundaries with touch rather than sight it began to all click with Homer. Her gaze wasn't filled with indifference to the captives like he had originally thought. Her gaze wasn't filled with anything, she was blind.

And she was one of them.

He wanted to do something to help, to reach out and comfort the girl, say something nice to ease her and not make her feel alone. But the quietness seemed to suffocate him as he heard the panic in her breathing. She backed up into the corner, tripping over the brook as she did and slid down against it.

"Okay, okay," Scott's voice broke Homer's focus on her. "Let me walk you through this,"

Homer resented the annoyance in his voice as he tried to only make the situation worse for her.

"You'll eventually realize it's no one's fault but your own." The words stung Homer, who'd already been through that entire situation himself, the panic, disbelief and self-hatred that all came with it. He heard what the words did to her as she let out a sob and slumped into herself and Homer knew he had to do something just anything to ease it for her.

"Your thoughts are gonna try to take you down. Don't let them. You'll find your freedom. In sleep." He watched as she turned her head towards him, giving her a small smile hoping that despite the fact that she couldn't see his face that she'd somehow hear the warmth of it. She needed to trust him as they all needed to trust each other to survive.

"What's your name?" He said after a pause, allowing her to process his words.

Despite all the layers she wore she was shivering and pale. He wanted to touch her, just comfort her in any way possible, but with the pane of glass between him he knew there was nothing to be done. So instead he spoke.

"What's your name?"

"P-prairie." She stammered over her words, shaking with either fear or cold, he couldn't tell.

"Prairie," He repeated, closing his eyes and breathing in the sound of that name. Before his first NDE he remembered reading Shakespeare for his Advanced English class. Romeo and Juliet. At the time it all seemed cliched and awkward and nothing like the reality of relationships. Homer mentally added Juliet's "What's in a name" speech to his list of Shakespearean bullshit as he decided no word or sound had ever been as religious of an experience as the name Prairie.

"My name is Homer."

The conversation dribbled on as he tried to break everything easy to her. He couldn't even tell if she was listening to him, her head buried into her knees as she curled up on the ground but he couldn't seem to stop talking to her. There were points he wondered if he kept going for her sake of for his own. Finally she began to stir, reaching out and crawling towards her bed.

He verbally directed her, warning her of the brook and then of where she could feel for the edge of her bed.

She finally spoke up after what seemed like hours of Homer just talking to himself or to her, she still couldn't tell.

"Thank you," she said in a quiet voice as she lightly hiccuped.

Homer sighed at the sound the sound of her voice, looking over at her, trying to figure out her what she was feeling. She looked exhausted, and he couldn't blame her.

"Sleep's going to be your best friend here, there's a lot you're going to face in the next couple of days, it's going to be hard, you need to be rested in order to survive." He calmly instruscted her. It was nothing like his prep talk from his days on the field, where he'd rile up the boys and get them excited for the game, this was all low and soft, as if the vibrations of his voice could upset some kind of balance if he were too loud.

"Just know you're not alone in this, anything he does to you he's done to us all, okay?"

"Well not anything." Scott interjected with a scoff.

"You can talk to us, this is too much for a single person to handle without getting horribly messed up, share your burdens with us. It'll help."

As the lights began to dim Homer made his way to his own bed, just a window pane behind hers.

"There's a glass wall between us right now, but besides that I'm right next to you, if you need anything, I'm here." He slowly slid under the covers, watching her as she processed his words.

He was about to drift off when he heard her softly chirp "Homer?"

"Yeah, Prair?" He softly mumbled her name, too tired to even fully get the name out.

"Could you just..." She seemed to struggle with her thoughts for a second, stumbling over her own phrasing "just try and- could-could you talk me to sleep?" She seemed confused by her own words as she fumbled over consonants and vowels. "I-I don't even know if that makes sense, I just-"

"No, no I get it," he paused for a moment wondering what he should say. Something happy, nothing she had to focus on, just anything to get her mind at ease and ready to just sleep. She deserved at least a little peace.

"Uh, well," he scratched the stubble on his chin, "As a kid I really wanted to be a drummer in a rock band, you know, like a real rockstar." It was a weird thing to confide in a stranger about, all his failed childhood dreams, but she didn't seem to mind, as she allowed herself to kind of melt into her blanket and pillow, finally beginning to relax for the first time since he saw her.

He talked forever about his parents, his brothers, his childhood, weekends at his grandparents farm, and despite never once successfully raising a crop, how he loved gardening and wished he could be good. He talked about everything he could until there was nothing more to be said and then he just kind of murmured her name for a while because the sound of it comforted him.

"Jesus fucking Christ man, she's asleep you can stop already." Scott's voice pierced against Homer's. "Take a piece of your own advice and go the fuck to bed."

Homer closed his mouth and settled further into his bed.

And for the first time in what felt like years, Homer did not feel ready for any silence.

**Author's Note:**

> Hope that didn't completely make your eyes bleed. Please leave comments or anything you want. Or don't. I'm a fanfiction writer, not a cop.


End file.
